Those Amy’s Baking Company Idiots Are Blaming Hackers Now

It was almost impossible to miss this train wreck yesterday, but after appearing on a disastrous episode of Kitchen Nightmares where Gordon Ramsay literally quit after watching the owners steal tips, resell desserts from other restaurants and threaten to call the police on customers who wanted the food they ordered, the Facebook page of Amy’s Baking Company in Scottsdale, Az. was bombarded with comments which the owners responded to in the worst way possible which is why you’re even reading about this. After becoming the laughing stock of the entire Internet, their Facebook posts have since been removed, but here are some of the highlights which will now live forever via Extra:

WE ARE NOT FREAKING OUT. WE DO NOT CARE ABOUT A “WITCH HUNT” I AM NOT A WITCH. I AM GODS CHILD. PISS OFF ALL OF YOU. F**K REDDITS, F**K YELP AND F**K ALL OF YOU. BRING IT. WE WILL FIGHT BACK.”

“I AM NOT STUPID ALL OF YOU ARE. YOU JUST DO NOT KNOW GOOD FOOD. IT IS NOT UNCOMMON TO RESELL THINGS WALMART DOES NOT MAKE THEIR ELECTRONICS OR TOYS SO LAY OFF!!!!”

“To all of the Yelpers and Reddits: Bring it on. you are just pussies. come to arizona. you are weaker than my wife, and weaker than me. come to my business. say it to my face. man to man. my wife is a jewel in the desert. you are just trash. reddits and yelpers just working together to bring us down. Pathetic.”

“This is Samy. I am keeping note of all names here. We will be pursuing action against you legaly, and against reddit and yelp, for this plot you have come together on. you are all just punks.”

“We do not, nor have we ever stolen or taken any of our servers ,waitresses, or waiters tips at Amy’s Baking Company… I would challenge any of our employees past or present to come forward with proof that we have ever done such a horrible thing.” Samy admitted on the show that he keeps the tips.

Even worse than all that, and possibly even the crime, Amy also said she’s a “good mother” while not having children and referring to her cats which you can see over on Buzzfeed. So like any story involving people who don’t understand the Internet threatening to call the police on the Internet, these two Einsteins are now blaming hackers which will surely blow everything over and not attract actual hackers. Well played:

Obviously our Facebook, YELP, Twitter and Website have been hacked. We are working with the local authorities as well as the FBI computer crimes unit to ensure this does not happen again. We did not post those horrible things. Thank You Amy &Samy

Fortunately, these people weren’t just on TV admittedly stealing tips from their employees and repackaging food from other restaurants then saying God’s on their own side because Christianity is a magic consequence-blocking shield, so everyone should easily believe this and let them go about their business. Or launch an investigation into whether the whole restaurant is a money laundering scheme after the idiot husband claimed he has Mafia ties. That’s another thing that could happen.

I loved it when Ramsay outed them to customers for keeping the server’s tips. These people have no shame, they will deny with one breath what they said a second ago, and will not accept a view of themselves that does not reflect perfection. Rarely have I seen so much folie a deux manifest. If anyone doesn’t like their food, they don’t know how to eat or are working for “the competition”. They also have the barefaced balls to use other people’s photos of confectionary on their website and claim it’s their work – and not remove them even when busted.

Yeah, I was afraid the server would get in trouble with her bosses for telling Ramsay that they keep her tips, but Samy was all, “Oh, yeah, she gets hourly, but I keep her tips. I do most of her work.” And by “most of her work,” he meant entering the orders into the point-of-sale terminals himself because “she didn’t know how”—except she did and we could tell that he really didn’t.

My housemates don’t really like me watching these kinds of shows anymore. I tend to get very angry at the disrespect shown to the food and staff (but honestly, more towards the food). There’s often a lot of yelling at the television followed by threats to return to cooking just to run people like this out of the profession.

And lo, Jesus sayeth, “You are all God’s children, and if someone sees you stealing from the weak, and accuses you thusly, do not turn the other cheek. Verily, call them ‘pussies’ and ‘trash,’ and offer to fight them.”

I didn’t see the reselling of the desserts being mentioned on the show; the desserts were the only aspect of the restaurant that Ramsay was ebullient about. I’m pretty sure the reselling only came out during the online kerfuffle. But it was hardly a surprise: Amy insisted on doing all the cooking herself, and one ticket at a time—which was why customers found themselves waiting 2 hours for a goddamn pizza—so when did she find the time to make all those desserts, too? Oh, and also, she’s a shit cook to begin with.

I didn’t know about the money-laundering charges, but it’s worth mentioning that Amy actually served prison time for fraud and identity theft five years ago. Fun!

I think the desserts weren’t made by Amy, which may be why they were good. They’ve also ripped off photos from Ace of Cakes, Apartment Therapy, Kraft and other sources and put them on their FB page to promote “their” work, and a lot of people have been busy notifying the actual owners of copyright violation. Good. Clearly she learned nothing after her first conviction for identity theft, because the concept that stealing what belongs to someone else is wrong is not part of her world.

And yeah, she clearly is a shit cook. Her picture needs to be next to the definition of “Dunning–Kruger Effect”. That’s a cognitive bias in unskilled individuals where they suffer from illusory superiority. Due to an inability to recognize their mistakes and flawed performance, they rate their poor skills and inability as being much higher than average, when the opposite is true. According to her, her raw/undercooked/frozen/reheated/bland offerings are all AMAZING.

Apparently no one ever dared to tell her that the restaurant isn’t supposed to write its own reviews, any more than it’s supposed to pocket its servers’ tips.

Hey, now, she’s just stealing pictures off teh Internetz, not using someone else’s Social Security number to procure a string of bank loans—again! (Or something like that; the details I’ve unearthed so far are a little sketchy.)

And oh yeah, she’s completely delusional about her cooking ability, but give part of that blame to her enabler husband, who wouldn’t tell her when customers complained about the food; he’d just toss it in the rubbish. He knew she wouldn’t take the criticism well.

Also: “Samy didn’t like to hire people who went to culinary school because he didn’t think they knew anything.”

Seriously, everyone who’s reading all this and haven’t watched the episode yet—WATCH IT, because it’s just full of boatloads of stuff like this.

She doesn’t need an enabler, she’s already blindly and totally committed to driving the bus to Crazytown on her own. When someone proclaims in the first minute of the show that she knew as a child she had a talent for food, and then declares she has a “God given talent” – you know for sure they’ve got fuck-all when it comes to training. It’s a textbook case of Dunning-Kruger effect – incompetent and unskilled Amy “knows” that she’s skilled simply because she feels she is, and she will never change because she will never get any training since she knows there is nothing any mortal can teach her that will improve on her “God given” gifts.

See, God wants her to cook – Ramsay, as a trained chef, is supposed to recognize and respect this mission from the Almighty as soon as he tastes her food. If he doesn’t like it, then he’s really disrespecting God’s will, rather than dissing Amy herself, so he will burn in hell with the rest of the “haters” (aka anyone with a palate). Quite a construct she has going on there!

I’ll have you know my cat says she’s full of it. I figured that was another obvious lie, along the lines of 1) “the pasta is home-made”, when it was clearly frozen and its “home” was somewhere far from Arizona, and 2) “she [the server] doesn’t know how to work the system” when it’s clear she learned how to use it in her previous jobs.

While you could claim CrazyAmy’s culinary shittiness re the entrees is due to the fact that pastry chefs generally do not make great savory chefs, and vice versa, it’s bald-face lies like those which lead me to believe she never made a single fucking one of those pastries in the case. Desserts like that require an insane amount of preparation, as well as specialized skills. As for prep, I can’t see her showing up there at 3AM, which is when most chefs de patisserie start their (usually) 12 hour work day (making rising dough can be a nightmare re time consumption) and then doing dinner service as well. As for the skill set required, you can see how poor her abilities are regarding time management when it comes to producing one dish, since she insists on doing all of the 65 dishes on the menu a la minute, a sure sign of the amateur chef. So I sincerely, truly, doubt she’s mastered the skills required for the ganache that so impressed Ramsay.

Oh, no doubt. My hedge on the dessert reselling was only that it was not addressed at all on the show, only after the fact. Even though it is true that pastry chefs don’t often make good savory chefs, and in addition to the time factors that we both pointed out, the idea that Amy’s desserts could be so exactingly good while her entrées were so carelessly bad beggars the imagination that she was ever behind them in the first place. What gobsmacked me, in retrospect, was that the very first thing Ramsay asked her was if she made the desserts herself, and she said “Yes!” unhesitatingly. The very first thing out of her mouth to him was an unflinching lie.

Which brings me to another point. While this couple is clearly delusional, let’s not play down the fact that they are also con artists. She’s a convicted one, of course, and while I don’t like speculating, I really wouldn’t be surprised at all if Samy had something shady going on in his past.

Sure she said “yes” – and if I were the Scottsdale PD I’d start making real sure there isn’t a pastry chef chained up in the basement. They also claimed the pasta was “home made” when it was packaged and frozen. Hey, I’m sure she was playing that ol’ “haters” and “boo-hoo-hoo-I’m being bullied” persecution card back when she was arrested and convicted for identity theft and loan fraud, too. What you call “delusional” is just an extension of the con they think they’re successful in putting over on the world – most criminals and sociopaths have their own “delusional” agenda going from infancy, and it pretty much boils down to a belief that1) they’re the smartest people they know, 2) they’re entitled to whatever they want, and 3) they’re justified doing whatever’s needed to achieve that particular aim. It sure as hell doesn’t include introspection into their own character flaws and faults, nor does it encompass being truthful about anything that doesn’t happen to serve their own needs and ends first.

I figure the telltale clue to determining exactly, precisely, beyond a shadow of a doubt when these people are lying…is when you see their lips move.

WE DO NOT NEED THIS. YOU STUPID PEOPLE. AMERICA IS ABOUT RESSLING [sic] , IT IS NOT A BIG DEAL. THE CAKES WE OFFER ARE EXPENSIVE BECAUSE WE HAVE TO REPACKAGE AND SHIP. DO NOT BLAME US BECAUSE YOU CANNOT AFFORD QUALITY.

Uh…what? The cost of the pastry that she unblinkingly claimed she made herself was never an issue, but I suppose it helps to get up on a “quality” high horse over something that was never questioned to try to distract people from the outright lying and “ressling” issue over something you never made. This gem, and many others, like the claim that since WalMart doesn’t make their own electronics, their reselling frozen pasta as their “homemade” own is perfectly OK, have now been removed – they’re now claiming hackers wrote those horrible untrue words and the Effa Bee Eye will shortly arrest the villainous plotters and vindicate them for all to see. Because, see, Samy was taking names. Oh, well, then.

Yes, Amy, because everyone desperately wants to eat at the culinary equivalent of WalMart. Seriously, I can’t tell you how much.

Comment from Samy b. of Amy’s Baking Company 9/2/2010 « I have not contacted you in your personal life!! You are INSANE!! I have only contacted you thru YELP.Perhaps it is the little voices in your head that are scaring you. I am not trying to scare you, but I am trying to PROVE to everyone you were lying in your “fake review” and you are still lying. You have never been to ABC. You were never a customer. Just admit it and be quiet!!!

Just to flesh out the details, I called God’s office and asked if this woman is his child. God’s attorney said “Oh, fuck no, and you can quote me on that,” though I did hear a paper shredder going in the background.

If you check out their YELP page you see can see reviews from customers dating back to 2008. They only responded to the negative reviews and it’s the with the same psychotic delusional bullshit style that the facebook posts were written in. One post in response to a negative review even says something along the lines of ‘You must not know what good food tastes like’. One reviewer also says his pizza had obviously been reheated. Amy responded and admitted that someone else had ordered the pizza but decided they didn’t want it so they reheated it and served it to him instead. I guess that part on their website about food being made to order isn’t all that accurate…kind of like how 80% of the photos of food on their facebook page were taken off the internet and not actual food made in their restaurant. Genius! I will give Amy a TINY amount of sympathy. If I had to let that old sack of beef jerky stick his tiny flaccid penis in me once a week I would live in a land of make believe too.

*Samy: Amy! Get the truffle oil! It’s time to put in an application for imaginary children…in your vagina.*

I got into it (being a chef) during the 90’s and by that point everyone had taken the Beastie Boys lead and switched to weed. But all the guy’s that were working in the 80’s talked all about the days of just tons of coke sitting in dry storage on a weekend night for anyone to share. Kinda glad I missed that era. Weed is the only thing I can handle.

But if you’re stoned, doesn’t everything taste good?
I’m thing about that episode of “Friends” where Jon Lovitz is a stoned restaurant owner auditioning Monica for head chef:
“Oooh! Taco shells! Make this!”
“Oooh! Macaroni and cheese! Make this!”

I fucking love Ramsey, mostly for his BBC shows though. Hell’s Kitchen sucks, Kitchen Nightmares is decent, but so much better on the BBC version.

The BBC versions of his shows are so much deeper, one on one interviews with the chefs, background on local ingredients and how to get fresh produce, funny exchanges between him and the chefs, etc. The American versions of his shows they make him scream and shout for effect. If you can get BBC America onDemand, I highly recommend watching some of his shows.

I really like the way he becomes human on Kitchen Nightmares. It’s less of the cartoony stereotype hothead chef and more a guy who really wants to help a place succeed. Every time I see Hell’s Kitchen I just laugh because that mode of running your kitchen is going away. You can now work for talent that doesn’t belittle you at the same time.

I watched this episode yesterday, the best part was Ramsey telling the crazy bitch wife that she “can’t talk to people that way”. Gordon Ramsey…telling someone they should be nicer to people. The guy who has built a career out of being a raging dick to people on TV.

To be fair, when Gordon is being a raging dick there is usually a reason for it. He plays it up for the U.S. Kitchen Nightmares and Hell’s Kitchen, but in general he’s trying to get a point across. She was just being ridiculous.

They should really worry about the people who watched the show and live in Scottsdale/Phoenix metro area, more than the people gawking on the net. A lot of us here are not happy with their attitudes or their treatment of people in this community, and have no problem visiting them to let them know it.

Oh, well, you’re just a “hater.” Their REAL customers—i.e., the ones who will eat just any slop set in front of them because their palates are so undiscerning, and who probably drink themselves half-blind beforehand during the hour or two they’re waiting for their food—surely will keep coming back and support their business.

Note the nearly five-year interval between the guilty plea and her eventual surrender for incarceration. (You might also want to take her attorney’s name down for when Lindsay Lohan hires him. “You say he kept her out of jail for five years after she pled guilty? Does he accept blow jobs as payment?”)